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The co-chair of the Congressional Joint 9/11 Inquiry (Bob Graham) today alleged a cover up by the U.S. government of state assistance by Saudi Arabia to the 9/11 hijackers.

Graham is no flake. He was a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for 10 years (including 18 months as chairman), member of the CIA External Advisory Board, chairman of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, 18-year U.S. senator, two-term governor of Florida, co-chair of the national commission on the BP oil spill, and member of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

The Taliban government in Afghanistan offered to present Osama bin Laden for a trial long before the attacks of September 11, 2001, but the US government showed no interest, according to a senior aide to the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar.
"Even before the [9/11] attacks, our Islamic Emirate had tried through various proposals to resolve the Osama issue. One such proposal was to set up a three-nation court, or something under the supervision of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference [OIC]," Muttawakil said.
"But the US showed no interest in it. They kept demanding we hand him over, but we had no relations with the US, no agreement of any sort. They did not recognise our government."

Crossing the Rubicon makes the case for official complicity within the U.S. government and names Dick Cheney as the prime suspect in the crimes of 9/11. There are 3 major points made within this book that are crucial to proving Cheney's guilt:

A great deal of controversy has arisen about what was known about the movements and location of Osama bin Laden in the wake of his killing by US Special Forces on May 2 in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Questions about what intelligence agencies knew or didn't know about al-Qaeda activities go back some years, most prominently in the controversy over the existence of a joint US Special Forces Command and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) data mining effort known as "Able Danger."

What hasn't been discussed is a September 2008 Department of Defense (DoD) inspector general (IG) report, summarizing an investigation made in response to an accusation by a Joint Forces Intelligence Command (JFIC) whistleblower, which indicated that a senior JFIC commander had halted actions tracking Osama bin Laden prior to 9/11.

In discussing my second 9/11 book, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, I have often said, only half in jest, that a better title might have been "a 571-page lie." (Actually, I was saying "a 567-page lie," because I was forgetting to count the four pages of the Preface.) In making this statement, one of my points has been that the entire Report is constructed in support of one big lie: that the official story about 9/11 is true.

Open Letter To Thomas Kean, Chairman Of The 9/11 Commission, from FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds

I, Sibel Edmonds, a concerned American Citizen, a former FBI translator, a whistleblower, a witness for a United States Congressional investigation, a witness and a plaintiff for the Department of Justice Inspector General investigation, and a witness for your own 9/11 Commission investigation, request your answers to, and your public acknowledgement of, the following questions and issues:

The U.S. Secret Service failed to do its job on September 11, 2001 in several important ways. These failures could be explained if the Secret Service had foreknowledge of the 9/11 events as they were proceeding. That possibility leads to difficult questions about how the behavior of Secret Service employees might have contributed to the success of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Answering those questions will require the release of existing interview transcripts as well as follow-up questioning, under oath, of a few key people within the agency.

On May 23, 2003 you testified before the 9/11 Commission in public hearing as to your experience on the morning of 9/11/01. During your testimony you stated that you arrived at the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) underneath the East Wing of the White House “at about 9:20 a.m.”, at which time Vice President Richard Cheney ...

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile."
--Condoleezza Rice, May 16, 2002

Five minutes before the Pentagon was hit on September 11, 2001, a training exercise being run by a US intelligence agency just over 20 miles from the Pentagon was set to include the scenario of a small private jet plane crashing into a building. It is unclear whether the scenario was played out, or if the exercise had been called off by that time.

As we approach the tenth anniversary of the tragic events of September 11, 2001, we must weigh our collective need for maintaining and promoting what is believed to be "safe" against what is in fact true.

A PhD in physics and former student of physics teacher David Chandler, when showed the compelling research David has put together on the physical improbability of the official story of the building collapses of the Three World Trade buildings on September 11 said, "I understand and accept your data as scientifically accurate and flawless, yet I don't believe it".

What are we to make of the failed Underwear Bomber plot, the Toothpaste, Shampoo, and Bottled Water Bomber plot, and the Shoe Bomber plot? These blundering and implausible plots to bring down an airliner seem far removed from al-Qaida's expertise in pulling off 9/11.

If we are to believe the U.S. government, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged al-Qaida "mastermind" behind 9/11, outwitted the CIA, the NSA, indeed all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies as well as those of all U.S. allies including Mossad, the National Security Council, NORAD, Air Traffic Control, Airport Security four times on one morning, and Dick Cheney, and with untrained and inexperienced pilots pulled off skilled piloting feats of crashing hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center towers, and the Pentagon, where a battery of state of the art air defenses somehow failed to function.

How much insider trading occurred in the days leading up to 9/11? How compromised is the evidence against alleged hijackers because of serious authentication problems with a key Dulles Airport videotape? To what extent does the testimony of more than five hundred firefighters differ from official reports of what happened at the World Trade Center buildings that day? How inseparably connected are Western covert operations to al-Qaeda?

9/11: Missing Black Boxes in World Trade Center Attacks Found by Firefighters, Analyzed by NTSB, Concealed by FBI

One of the more puzzling mysteries of 9-11 is what ever happened to the flight recorders of the two planes that hit the World Trade Center towers. Now it appears that they may not be missing at all.
Counterpunch has learned that the FBI has them.

Recently released FBI documents prove the existence of highly sensitive National Security and criminal investigations of "Turkish Activities" in Chicago prior to September 11, 2001.

These documents add further support to many of the allegations that former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has claimed, in public and in Congress, since 2002. The documents were released under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request into an organization called the Turkish American Cultural Alliance (TACA), an organization repeatedly named by Ms. Edmonds as being complicit in the crimes that she became aware of when she was a translator at the FBI.

A spirited and global citizens' media was birthed by our hunger to learn the truth that lay inside the graves of those who gave their lives on 9/11. This citizens' media brought forward the questions that people throughout the world raised and wanted answered.

These are the UnAnswered Questions of 9/11. The persistence of the citizens' media in raising them and demanding answers has illuminated the failure of those responsible to explain what happened or why.

Pulitzer Prize winner William Bunch uses an account from the book, "Behind-the-Scenes: Ground Zero," as one source for the claim that three black boxes from the aircraft that crashed into the World Trade Center were discovered by authorities during the recovery efforts in 2001-2002. This is contrary to the official story. (Philadelphia Daily News, Thursday, 10/28/04 - a longer version was published on his "Campaign Extra" weblog.)

In a never-before-seen interview, Richard Clarke, former White House Counterterror "Tsar" to Presidents Clinton and Bush, goes on record about what he believes happened at CIA in the run-up to the 9/11 attacks, accusing then-CIA Director George Tenet and two of his deputies of deliberately not informing the White House, FBI, and Defense Department about two future hijackers inside U.S., then covering up from the 9/11 investigations.

In hearings last Friday, Sen. Dayton (D-MN) raised an obvious point: if the timeline of air defense response as promoted in the Kean Commission's best-selling book is correct, then the timeline presented repeatedly by NORAD during the last two years was completely wrong. Yet now no one at NORAD is willing to comment on their own timeline!

When the official story of 9/11 can be changed repeatedly without anyone ever being held accountable, we have no right to ever again expect honest government. Please read the following story and do your part to support Sen. Dayton for highlighting the contradiction, and to encourage the media to follow up.

Why is it important that we not let the so-called conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 be drowned out?

After spending the better part of the last five years treating these theories with utmost skepticism, I have devoted serious time to actually studying them in recent months, and have also carefully watched several videos that are available on the subject. I have come to believe that significant parts of the 9/11 theories are true, and that therefore significant parts of the "official story" put out by the U.S. government and the 9/11 Commission are false. I now think there is persuasive evidence that the events of September did not unfold as the Bush administration and the 9/11 Commission would have us believe. The items below highlight the major questions surrounding 9/11 but do not constitute a detailed recounting of the evidence available.

Some of the most startling facts about the air defense failures have to do with the utter failure of communications between the agencies responsible for protecting the nation. At the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), two people stood out in this failed chain of communications. One was a lawyer on his first day at the job, and another was a Special Operations Commander who was never held responsible for his critical role, or even questioned about it.

Just after September 11th 2001, many governments began investigations into possible insider trading related to the terrorist attacks of that day.

Belgium, Cyprus, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Monte Carlo, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United States, and others initiated investigations. Although considerable evidence of insider trading exists, none of the investigations resulted in a single indictment because the people identified as having been involved in the suspicious trades were seen as unlikely to have been associated with those alleged to have committed the 9/11 crimes.

ISSUE #1: On the morning of September 11, 2001, NORAD was running war games involving the scenario of hijacked airliners, while the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) was running a drill for the scenario of an errant aircraft crashing into a government building, at the exact same time as an identical scenario was perpetrated in reality.

What role, if any, did Secretary Rumsfeld, Undersecretary Wolfowitz, and acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers play in any war game scenario on the morning of September 11, 2001?

What briefings did they receive about these wargames before, during, and after the morning in question?

A Saudi Arabian accused of associating with several of the September 11 hijackers and who disappeared from his home in the United States a few weeks before the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, is in London working for his country's state oil company.

Abdulaziz al-Hijji and his wife Anoud left three cars at their luxurious home in a gated community in Sarasota, Florida -- one of them new -- and flew to Saudi Arabia in August 2001. The refrigerator was full of food; furniture and clothing were left behind; and the swimming pool water was still circulating.

We strongly agree with President Bush's decision to move Condoleezza Rice out of her position as National Security Advisor. Ms. Rice's statement from her May 16, 2002 press briefing:

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile" made it clear that she was ill equipped to be advising anyone on matters of national security. Condoleezza Rice was the top National Security official with President Bush at the July 2001 G-8 summit in Genoa. This was where "U.S. officials were warned that Islamic terrorists might attempt to crash an airliner into the summit ..."

In a famous book by Antoine de Saint Exupery, a little prince from another planet asks the narrator to draw a sheep. After several unsatisfactory attempts, the narrator simply draws a box and tells the little prince that the sheep is in the box. The little prince then exclaims -- "That is exactly the way I wanted it!"

Just so, the Bush Administration asked its scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for an explanation as to what happened at the World Trade Center (WTC) on 9/11. In response to this request, NIST drew up a series of fanciful stories over a period of years, each story differing from the previous one. Finally, after seven long years, NIST published its last story for WTC 7 by simply saying, in effect: "The explanation is in our computer."

I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency [the National Security Agency] and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."--Senator Frank Church (1975)I would like to discuss four major and badly understood events - the John F. Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and 9/11. I will analyze these deep events as part of a deeper political process linking them, a process that has helped build up repressive power in America at the expense of democracy.

George W. Bush's brother was on the board of directors of a company providing electronic security for the World Trade Center, Dulles International Airport and United Airlines, according to public records. The company was backed by an investment firm, the Kuwait-American Corp., also linked for years to the Bush family.

The security company, formerly named Securacom and now named Stratesec, is in Sterling, Va.. Its CEO, Barry McDaniel, said the company had a "completion contract" to handle some of the security at the World Trade Center "up to the day the buildings fell down."

NEW YORK CITY, May 16, 2004 - The Kean Commission was called to life in Nov. 2002, when the White House dropped its objections to an independent 9/11 investigation, after many months of persistent lobbying by September 11th families. At the time, this was seen as a victory for the relatives of those killed on September 11th, and for their allies in the fight for open government and accountability.
"Mr. Bush, who approved the flight of the bin Laden family out of the United States, when all commercial flights were grounded?"

The 9/11 Commission came to New York the second week of May for a two-day set of hearings at The New School University. As hundreds of Sept. 11th family members, reporters and curious New Yorkers lined up for airport-style security checks, they received copies of a new 24-page booklet published by NY 9/11 Truth, with help from 911Truth.org.
"Scamming America: The Official 9/11 Cover-up Guide" is named after a quote by former Sen. Max Cleland, who resigned from the commission last November with the words, "Bush is scamming America."

Former FBI agents say the agency's bin Laden unit misled them about two hijackers.A growing number of former government insiders -- all responsible officials who served in a number of federal posts -- are now on record as doubting ex-CIA director George Tenet's account of events leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Among them are several special agents of the FBI, the former counterterrorism head in the Clinton and Bush administrations, and the chairman of the 9/11 Commission, who told us the CIA chief had been "obviously not forthcoming" in his testimony and had misled the commissioners.

Recent Articles

Louise Richardson, the incoming vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, has attracted controversy for suggesting the US overreacted to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.

Richardson is a well-respected expert on terrorism studies and made her comments in the context of a nuanced argument about how nations should best respond to terrorism in the contemporary era.

It is however inevitable, given both Richardson’s new status as the head of a prestigious institution and the politically charged nature of anything to do with 9/11, that her views have attracted some angry responses in the US.…

WASHINGTON (CN) – The CIA declassified five documents Friday that show differing perceptions of the agency’s counterterrorism efforts prior to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

One 480-page report from the Office of the Inspector General reviews the findings of a joint inquiry by the House and Senate intelligence committees regarding the performance of CIA employees before 9/11.

The OIG said its “overall conclusions on most of the important issues” coincided with Congress but that it did reach different findings “in a number of matters.”

“Concerning certain issues,” the CIA and its officers “did not discharge their responsibilities in a satisfactory manner,” the report states.…

Recently it has been noticed that Wirt Walker, a 9/11-insider trading suspect who ran security for several of the impacted facilities, now works with men who were, prior to 9/11, key players in national defense and terrorism response. Given the role that Stratesec played and the relationships between suspects already revealed, this seems more than coincidental. Moreover, these men have top-secret clearances, which further suggests that Walker is a covert operative.…

The media has taken an increasing interest in the 28 pages that were redacted from the 9/11 Joint Congressional Inquiry Report. The stories usually feature one of the Inquiry’s leaders, former Senator Bob Graham, who has claimed that the missing pages point to involvement of the government of Saudi Arabia. Although Saudi complicity is in no way surprising, facts that are often overlooked suggest that Graham’s actions may not be entirely straightforward.…

From September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows

As family members of those who died in the attacks launched on Sept. 11, 2001, we reflect on the recent MTA ruling to ban political advertisements on all MTA vehicles as an unfortunate sacrifice when a middle ground could have been forged.

Our families still mourn deeply the loss of our loved ones who perished on 9/11.…

In 2002, the Sept. 11 victims’ families filed a lawsuit in federal court against the government of Saudi Arabia for their alleged role in funding and supporting al-Qaeda. The lawsuit floundered in 2013 amidst delays and a lack of substantial evidence, but new information has emerged that may resurrect the lawsuit.

Statements from former al-Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui suggest that members of the Saudi royal family had been major donors to the terrorist group as recently as the late 1990s.…

Originally published at the NYTimes by Lorie Van Auken and Mindy Kleinberg on 2/17/15

To the Editor:New Light Cast on Secret Pages in Sept. 11 Report” (front page, Feb. 5) reiterates Senator Bob Graham’s finding from the Congressional Joint Inquiry: that the Saudis were tied to the funding of the 9/11 attacks. Philip D. Zelikow, executive director of the 9/11 Commission, has tried to refute this.

J. Michael Springmann has just published, Visas for Al Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked The World. As a former member of the US Foreign Service, Mr. Springmann exposes the truth about American involvement in the training and international movement of Muslim terrorists and the subsequent increase in jihadist terrorism. Some of these terrorists have links to 9/11.

Thousands of American soldiers and civil servants have lost their lives in the War on Terror. Innocent citizens of many nations, including Americans killed on 9/11, have also paid the ultimate price.…

Science has been misused for political purposes many times in history. However, the most glaring example of politically motivated pseudoscience—that employed by U.S. government scientists to explain the destruction of the World Trade Center (WTC)—continues to be ignored by many scientists. As we pass the 10th anniversary of the introduction of that account, it is useful to review historic examples of fake science used for political purposes and the pattern that defines that abuse.…

On Monday, attorneys representing victims of the 9/11 attacks filed papers alleging substantial Saudi financial support for Al Qaeda and terrorism, including a plan to shoot down Air Force One. This Saudi support supposedly continued up to shortly before 9/11. Donors included leading members of the royal family.

These extraordinary allegations came in rare testimony from behind the walls of a Supermax prison by the so-called “20th hijacker,” Zacharias Moussaoui, a convicted Al Qaeda operative.…

NBC News anchor Brian Williams is taking heat for having repeatedly lied to the public about an Iraq War experience that he never had. Williams has decided to take a few days off to see if the whole affair will blow over but that strategy is not likely to work given the legs that the story has grown. There is a way for Williams to turn it all around, although it would be tougher than anything he has done in the past.…

The official US government report on the attacks of September 11, 2001, has altered and obscured the testimony of US Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta in a manner which absolves former Vice President Dick Cheney of failing to defend the Pentagon.

Mineta’s testimony suggested that Cheney had a clear window of opportunity during which he was made aware that an aircraft was headed straight for either the White House or the Pentagon, after it was clear that the nation was under attack, when he could have given an order and brought the plane down before it hit the Pentagon.…

NORAD is the US-Canadian military agency responsible for defending North American airspace. Its traditional operating procedures – according to which planes are to be intercepted when they deviate from their courses, turn off their transponders, or permanently lose radio contact – were not followed on 9/11.

As the commander-in-chief of NORAD on 9/11, General Ralph E. “Ed” Eberhart was ultimately responsible for all of NORAD’s failures on 9/11 – most importantly, the failure to intercept hijacked airliners before they could strike the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

Just before Christmas, former FBI special agent Mark Rossini greeted me with his usual good cheer when we met for drinks in a midtown Manhattan restaurant. He told me his life had finally taken a turn for the better. He’s spending most of his time in Switzerland, where he works for a private global corporate-security firm. “Life’s good,” he said.

Right after 9/11, I remember talking to my women’s group and saying I just don’t think this could have happened without someone knowing about it and allowing it to,” says Fran Shure. “It was totally intuitive, because I knew nothing. And that was received with a lot of censoring remarks. I just looked at them and said, you know, I have the right to think the unthinkable and I’m going to look into this.…

Since the early days after the Sept. 11 attacks, when news emerged that most of the airline hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, dark allegations have lingered about official Saudi ties to the terrorists. Fueling the suspicions: 28 still-classified pages in a congressional inquiry on 9/11 that raise questions about Saudi financial support to the hijackers in the United States prior to the attacks.

Stand up and be counted: Make this one of your New Year’s resolutions. Revel in your courage to stand up for truth and justice and be counted.

If you have been paying attention to what is going on in this country, you know that the 9/11 attacks have been used again and again as the justification for policies that contradict core American values. Endless war, torture and warrantless surveillance do not reflect the values of the overwhelming majority of people who inhabit the land of the free and home of the brave.…

Originally published at Mother Jones by Erika Eichelberger and AJ Vicens on 12/23/14

The cost of US war-making in the 13 years since the September 11 terrorist attacks reached a whopping $1.6 trillion in 2014, according to a recent report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

The $1.6 trillion in war spending over that time span includes the cost of military operations, the training of security forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, weapons maintenance, base support, reconstruction, embassy maintenance, foreign aid, and veterans’ medical care, as well as war-related intelligence operations not tracked by the Pentagon.…